Valentine’s Day is a great opportunity to give your kids a fun and engaging math activity. There are a number of themed activities and math worksheets available through a quick Internet search. Here’s how you can use these resources to give the kids a math lesson that they’ll enjoy.

You can create a number of other fun activities to bring out the inner-mathematician in a child. For example, if you want to teach kids about the basic ideas of volume and surface area, then Valentine’s Day could really lend a hand. Fill three glass jars that differ in size with some heart-shaped candy. Ask the kids to estimate how many sweet treats they think each jar contains.

The candy could also help children practice their ability to make tallies, data charts and graphs. Using heart-shaped candy of different colors, ask your child to tally how many of each color there are. You could even use one of the themed math worksheets to help. Once they have created a total for each color, ask your child to compile the totals into a bar chart. If you are feeling kind, then the candy can become a generous reward for the hard work that they’ve done.

Use heart-shaped candy to teach the more simple mathematical arithmetic; like addition and subtraction. Provide children with pre-determined math problems that they can figure out using the sweets. Alternatively, make heart-shaped numeral cards that children can arrange on their desk to solve a math problem. You could give them a total to reach and they must use the cards to create the question.

There are websites that offer a vast array of Valentine’s Day worksheets. They offer varying levels of difficulty to make them suitable for Grade One to Grade Five. Each set of math worksheets include all the major mathematical problems; addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and even word problems. All these sheets include Valentine’s Day pictures. The online math worksheets are also available with pre-written word problems that are all associated with what happens on Valentine’s Day.

The heart shape is fantastically useful for teaching all sorts of mathematical problems, including geometry. Have your child cut out a heart shape from paper and use it to help them understand symmetry. How many lines of symmetry does a Heart Have?

Help kids learn about patterns by using colored hearts or a series of Valentine’s Day pictures. Introduce them to simple patterns; for instance red heart, green heart, red heart. From here you can make the patterns more complex by making them longer or including a higher degree of variation.

Valentine’s Day is a perfect opportunity for educating your child about many math problems; from simple arithmetic and word problems to patterning and geometry. There are many ideas to choose from that you’re sure to find engaging and rewarding for both you and your child. So give them a try next Valentine’s Day and see if your child will be struck by Cupid’s arrow and feel the love for math.